


oh hollow men

by winterleaving



Category: One Piece
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, good lord someone help me tag things, let's be sad again about ace guys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:41:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27816247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterleaving/pseuds/winterleaving
Summary: It’s a little bit like poetry, he thinks. How easily their deaths mirror each other. How easily they diverge.
Comments: 15
Kudos: 20





	oh hollow men

Luffy is red. 

He’s filled to the brim with dreams, with ambition, with a longing for something more than what he is, and he looks at the sea reflecting fire in the mornings and thinks, _I am free_. 

Luffy’s red like a fire burning, red like the crimson sunrise - red like the vibrant death of the battlefield. Red like the color of extremity, and he breathes in danger like he breathes in air, like he needs it to live. 

And perhaps, he does. 

At Marineford, he slammed into the rolling waves of white, a blood crusted boy running on fumes. His gaze was a bloody one, and exhaustion chased every step. Still, his will exploded out, pulsing in time with the drums of war, and it brought the world to its knees. It was a bright arcing red, like the color of a conqueror. 

Like Roger. 

Like Luffy. 

_And -_

(Ace was red once, too.) 

And Rayleigh remembers watching it - remembers the shaky transponder snail footage. Remembers seeing Portgas D. Ace burning himself alive, blazing out so brightly he consumed everything else in his death. 

This is what Rayleigh knows: War is alwayds red.

Red like a volcano erupting, like a mad dog chasing down the rabbit, like the haze of anger clouding your vision, poisoning the senses. Akainu hurtled across the bloody grounds of Marineford with the force of a bullet, exploding on impact. Like an arrow flying true, his fist landed dead center in the chest of a man too young. 

He left a smoking crater in him and called it justice, left behind a boy of seventeen and a thousand mourning brothers holding swords in his name. Left behind a ragtag family on a little island halfway across the world, is unaware of the tragedy that has befallen. After all, there’s just the slightest bit of lag, when broadcasting so far away. Just enough, that means you can’t change anything now matter how hard you wish. 

And Rayleigh isn’t a poetic man - he’s read his fair share by virtue of being alive for so long, but he isn’t a poet. He’s a fighter, albeit retired, and he never did have time to pursue any of the finer arts. Perhaps, in a kinder life, he would’ve. In a softer world, he could have.

But this life is not kind nor soft, and, staring at the screen, it almost feels like the blood choking Ace (Gol D. Ace his captain’s son, his captain’s _son,_ _his captain’s s o n_ ) is somehow choking him too. 

It’s a little bit like poetry, he muses. How easily their deaths mirror each other. How easily they diverge.

_Ah,_ he thinks. _It’s red._

* * *

When the war has cooled and the main players of this story have all escaped underwater, he meets them on a hidden island. A funeral march clambers out of the submarine one by one, but the body is missing. ~~In the aftermath, it’s the living left behind.~~

Here on Rusukaina, the blazing star of a boy from Sabaody is impossible to find. He watches Jinbei cradle his body gently - it’s cold and pale. He looks as though he might shatter any moment, now. His youth stands here, written in his gangly limbs and his soft, rounded face. 

Only seventeen in the shadow of a war.

When he wakes up, he looks almost like a ghost. Like he’d fade away at any moment. 

Silence hangs over them like a heavy cloak, and no knell tolls. Over on the shore, he sees the Knight of the Sea hand something to the boy like he’s damning him, and watches as Monkey D. Luffy seems to shatter all over again. Something red and cracked glints in the light, and his mouth opens into a silent scream. There’s something empty in his expression - something cold and haunting and ravenous. It's the expression of bitter grief that Rayleigh knows all too well, and he sighs.

He watches the boy shake and curl over, collapsing into himself as he desperately gasps for air. And he sees his hands uncurl around a scant palm-full of cheap red beads.

…Ace wore a string of them around his neck, didn’t he? 

He lets out a heavy breath, and stays silent in the shadows. A few paces in front of him, the boy is pressing the only pieces left of his brother to his heart.

Rayleigh has never felt so old.

It seems cruel now, to propose to separate the boy from his crew for even longer, but it’s the best and only chance the rookie has if he wants to survive. The New World will eat him alive, and Rayleigh won’t let it happen. If he must break the boy to make him stronger, then he will. 

He must. 

(This is the man who will become the Pirate King, and Rayleigh can see the shadow of Roger in him. Can see the unrealized potential that he must draw forth.) 

It feels like a horrible betrayal to the man Ace was, and the man that Luffy will be, but Rayleigh has been haunted by the spectre of his captain for twenty something years and he will be for at least a decade more. Perhaps one day, he will look at the Strawhat boy and see Luffy, but right now he looks at him and finds the familiar lines of Roger in his face. And for now, it's enough.

It’s reason enough to keep him alive. To save the still alive boy who looks like his long dead king. 

* * *

Luffy feels like he’s drowning. His face is twisted into a horrible snarl, and his knuckles are bloody with loss. He hasn’t stopped shaking since he woke up again, and he doesn’t know why. It’s not cold. It’s not.

But something hurts in his chest and it’s hard to breathe. 

(The Grand Line has a nickname - the Pirate’s Graveyard.) 

The lurking waters swallow up souls and don’t care who they kill. This was important. He didn’t bother paying attention to it, but it’s important. (It killed Brooke) It was important. (It almost killed him) It’s still important. It killed Ace it’s the sea where Ace died, was _murdered it was his Graveyard._ It’s Ace’s first graveyard. First.

Last? Ace. Ace, Ace, _Ace_ he _died_ he’s gone but - but, but, 

He chokes on a sob.

But he promised. He promised, didn’t he? That he wouldn't leave before Luffy did. Said that he was too strong to just roll over and die. Said that he was gonna be Pirate King. Said that he’d make the moustache- _ossan_ (dead, also dead) Pirate King. Luffy knows it like he knows breathing: Ace won’t die. But he _did,_ because Luffy was _weak,_ weak enough to let his brother ~~die~~ weak enough that his brother had to save him, again, and Luffy wants to curl up and die too. 

He screams and digs his hands into his face, blinding clawing for an answer that won’t come. He wants to rip his bandages off and, and -

And what good is it, that he’s still here? When Ace is _dead?_

~~When Ace died in his place~~

He feels like he’s drowning. He feels like he’s suffocating in the air. He snaps his neck up, tearing his eyes away from the sand. Like this, he's facing the ocean. Bile is rising in the back of his throat, and the first time, he finds himself hating the sight of the big blue mirror. This damned sea. It stretches before him, farther than he can see it, and he wants to hurl. 

Someone’s screaming like they’re being eaten alive, and _oh it’s him._ He slams his fists against the ground, and feels his knuckles split on sharp rock.

_Fuck!_

This damn ocean, what did it ever give him, when he so damn weak, so weak and stupid and how can he ever become Pirate King like this? When he can’t even save one person? His hands are trembling around the beads, and he brings them up to his chest and stifles a cry. 

This great blue sea of dreams where he once had thought himself free, thought himself king - 

First it ate Sabo. Then it ate Ace.

Would it eat Luffy now, too? 

* * *

He reaches for his hat, but he remembers too late that it’s not there.

**Author's Note:**

> sometimes you gotta write a sad fic when ur feeling sad (T_T)  
> tell me your thoughts ~ curious to know what you guys think!  
> as usual, I did not proofread so please ignore any typos you may have stumbled across orz


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